So, there have been some recent discussions about how our current forum software, phpBB, is less than ideal for what some of the more programming-oriented wolves here want to do. Automated vote tallies, thread creation, and auto-locking of threads are things that might be pretty nice to have but are incredibly awkward to implement under phpBB.

As Omega prepares for another round of forum upgrades, it's probably not a bad idea to discuss what forum software is ideal in the medium-/long-term (Omega's going to do his upgrades anyway, the upgrades just sparked the discussion).

From what I've seen, vBulletin or XenForo are probably the closest to phpBB in overall style/approach. Discourse has a bigger divergence in terms of look and feel, but in theory would be super-easy to add things like auto-tallies for (I've looked at the plugin model and it's very straightforward).

All three, in theory, support importing the existing phpBB board information which means we wouldn't have to abandon everything and start fresh yet again.

Thoughts/comments? Other forum software to look at? Does anybody even care about this other than me?

Note: "We should stick with what we have" is a perfectly fine comment. Not everyone's going to care about automating stuff and familiarity with the interface definitely has value. There isn't any sort of impending cut-off date for phpBB so continuing with it is also a valid option.

Disclaimer: I'm not an Admin nor do I speak for those jerks. This is just a discussion to get people's opinions/thoughts, not any sort of promise on behalf of Omega and Co. to actually take action on anything.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

I haven't dipped my toes in any of those yet to really form an opinion. At some point I had a few ideas that would be fun just to try out PHP. Probably nobody should hold any breath waiting for that to happen though.